When it comes to community-building and social media, Christine Bentsen was definitely ahead of the curve.
"I fell in love with the concept of online community and the potential of social media in the mid 90s, when I worked at an Austin-based startup called ichat," she says. "ichat developed an early suite of online community tools that now, in later versions, we all know and love: IM, chat rooms, and message boards. I worked with the applications, I used them in my professional and personal life, and I remember thinking.... wow.... this makes my computer something else entirely."
After ichat, Christine worked at a number of startups, and founded her own interactive agency, Conduit Interactive, in 1999. Conduit built a number of online communities, and continues to do so today (most recently, a community for a global charity that connects sponsors to their sponsored children, and a variation on Threadless).
After the 2000 downturn Christine went back to startups, keeping Conduit on the side. When her last startup got acquired, she spent three years with the acquiring company, where she managed one of its major websites, and started both the blogging program and introduced external podcasts. Today she works as a project manager for 7 Billion People,, which is using behavioral science to dynamically customize the online shopping experience for every customer.
"I started my personal blog in 1999, and launched Web2.0Maven last year," she says. "WebMaven has gone through periods of neglect while I earned my MBA (at the University of Texas). Now I'm done with all that and super excited to get back to blogging. I'm still completely enamored with social media and online community. The presses are in the hands of the people ... now it really gets interesting."
And, for those of you who may be wondering, she is distantly related to form Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen, the 1988 vice-presidential candidate whose "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" line in a debate with Dan Quayle has achieved political put-down immortality .